The dog is shaking on my lap and the linoleum smells like disinfectant and something underneath it I don't let myself name. She's got her whole weight pressed into me, all thirty pounds, trying to become smaller than she is. I keep my hand flat on her ribs so I can feel her breathing go too fast.
There's a scale in the corner, a poster of a cat's teeth, a jar of biscuits she won't take. Nobody in this room can explain to her what is happening or why the person she trusts most on the planet drove her here and is holding her still for it. She just knows I stayed. That's the whole deal she's making with the situation: he stayed, so it must be survivable.
I flew at seventeen thousand miles an hour once. The air that keeps everything down there alive, all of it, weather and birds and every breath any creature has ever taken, is thinner than the shell of an egg. You can see it as a blue line at the edge, and it is nothing. It is almost not there.
Under that ribbon, on a small wet planet, in a small bright room, a frightened animal decided a human hand was enough to hold onto. She doesn't know how unlikely she is. Neither do I, most days.
The vet comes in and the dog looks at me, not at her. I keep my hand where it is.
I have never in my life been trusted with anything heavier.